How many generations of babies do you think the world has known? Too, too many to count! The birth and successful rearing of children to adulthood has been the domain of women since time immemorial with all the little must and must-nots handed down from mother to daughter for thousands of years uninterrupted, that is until recently. The specifics varied according to the mother’s culture and what kinds of foods were available to her. But the fact of mothers and grandmothers deciding and providing their cultures whole and healthy foods to her baby did not vary in the least.

In modern times though parents rely heavily on medical experts and the makers of nutritional formulas and foods to know how to provide sustenance for their young children. Grandma isn’t consulted.

This represents an extreme break in the way children are fed. Instead of foods being offered to young children according to tradition and having historical support proving that it works out well we have a situation where institutions with a financial interest in promoting certain kinds of eating are making a lot of the choices for families with young kids.

This my friends is very, very scary.

This kind of institutional influence has already lead to a significant loss of health in our children. Chronic illness in children was once rare and sadly that is no longer the case! Same thing for cancer in childhood … it was once unheard of. Now, well, it’s far too common.

We need to take a closer look at why this is happening and what we as individuals might be able to do about it. This post is the kickoff to a year-long blog series exploring the differences between Granny’s care and feeding of kids and ours. Each month we’ll take a good look at what’s changed together.

The Care and Feeding of Free Range Kids Granny Style

Raising kids used to be a fairly uncomplicated affair. You had them, fed them well, disciplined and taught them, loved them and they grew to be generally healthy well-adjusted adults. Of course, there were exceptions but this was the general rule. Mental illness rates were low. Criminality was low. Chronic illness amongst children and young adults was very rare. Parents enjoyed practical help and support from extended family and friends.

Contrast that with the situation now where raising kids is a complex and largely unsupported task. Each individual parent is charged with sole responsibility for a myriad of choices ranging from diet to education to socialization. No one can take on a task this big alone. All of us need support and advice. In modern culture though most of that advice comes thru the conduit of the media from various experts we know little about. We don’t know their motivations really and the one thing we do know is that they don’t know or love our children.

In Granny’s day that wasn’t the case.

This isn’t to say that child rearing used to be perfect … not by a long shot. I still remember tales told by old folks from when I was a kid of really severe punishments they received as kids. I was shocked then and I frankly I’m still shocked now when I think of them. I’m all for improvement on this score. But I think the changes in how we feed kids has almost entirely been for the worse.

There are no perfect parents here

While we are looking at these changes over the coming months I want you to keep in mind this one fact: There are no perfect parents here … only good-enough parents. Grandma wasn’t perfect, she was good enough to raise basically healthy well-adjusted kids. We’re shooting for that standard, not perfection.

We’ve all made mistakes. We’re all doing the best we can with what we know now. Absolutely no kicking yourself for errors long past or even yesterday’s mistakes … can we agree on this? Good.

Read Along

I strongly suggest that anyone caring for children or planning to do so soon get a copy of “Nourishing Tradition’s Book of Baby and Child Care” as soon as you can. Read my review if you’re totally unfamiliar with it. Devote some time to it. Think about how to apply it in your home. And each month here on Granny’s Vital Vittles we’ll take up a new topic from the book and discuss it here on the blog. So if you’re not on the mailing list signup before you forget so you’ll get an email when each new post comes out.

]]>http://grannysvitalvittles.com/how-did-your-great-grandmother-feed-your-grandma-when-she-was-little/feed/9Spend Less Time in the Kitchen with Master Recipeshttp://grannysvitalvittles.com/spend-less-time-in-the-kitchen-with-master-recipes/
http://grannysvitalvittles.com/spend-less-time-in-the-kitchen-with-master-recipes/#commentsSun, 01 Feb 2015 19:47:19 +0000http://grannysvitalvittles.com/?p=3417

What if I told you that you could learn a handful of recipes and be able to makes hundreds of different things all from your own pantry? No more hunting around for recipes that match what you have, no laborious detailed meal planning, just simply walking into your kitchen and starting to cook?

Sound too good to be true?

Well, all this can be yours if you learn a handful of simple flexible recipe templates, or master recipes as chefs call them. Now, when a chef calls something a “Master” recipe it’s intimidating, like you’ll need to be a master of cooking to be able to do them. Not the case at all! Anyone can learn a few simple flexible recipes and be able to whip up something to eat in a jiffy .

Granny Didn’t Depend on Recipes

This is the way Granny did her day to day cooking. Sure, some kept a card file of clippings from newspapers or friends shared recipes. For the most part these were special occasion foods made for parties or pot lucks or holidays. Things you don’t make all the time so it’s hard to just remember them.

For day to day cooking Granny relied mostly on memory to make things she had learned over the years. That’s why so many grown kids would beg their aging Moms to write out her recipes for them!

Recipes are a Stage in Learning to Cook

Recipes are to cooking what training wheels are to learning to ride a bike. They are a supportive stage in learning to cook. With someone to give a precise guideline like a recipe it’s easier for a beginner cook to make something to eat … that much is obvious to all. But, what’s not so obvious is that this clearly defined plan makes cooking harder in some ways. You’ll have to shop to ensure you have every little thing the recipe requires. Some of the ingredients may be rarely used in your kitchen or may be very expensive to buy.

When people hit this wall in the recipe stage of learning they start substituting ingredients for things they have on hand or cheaper items. If you’re already doing this you are already moving past the recipe stage … congratulations!

Master recipes are kinda like an advanced version of recipe substitution. Practically all of the ingredients are variable. In a master recipe there are guidelines about ingredients, for example:

1 lb meat

4 cups broth/water/milk/

4 cups cooked starchy food like rice, beans, potatoes, etc.

So if you don’t have beef you use ham, if you don’t have rice you use potatoes, and so on.

Master Recipes Make Cooking at Home More Affordable

With this kind of flexibility you can easily make meals that are on the cheap side, on the expensive side and everything in-between! Really, it’s all up to you. If you need to mind your food budget for awhile, then favor the cheaper ingredients, or what you have in quantity in your pantry. If you are working hard to up the nutrient density of your families diet to help deal with a health issue let’s say, why then just favor the more nutrient dense ingredients like cream, butter, liver and broth.

It all up to you to decide!

New Cookbook Featuring Master Recipes is Close to Ready

I’ve been working on a little cookbook that features a handful of master recipes for dinner dishes. Soon it’ll be on Amazon and available for download for a couple bucks. I’m so looking forward to it’s release! It’s brief and to the point to help provide a guideline for making dinner for those working on The Granny Plan. Very early in the program you’ll start making just one dinner each night, then expand on that till you’re cooking the whole week. This little cookbook will help support you in doing just that!

If you’re not signed up for my mailing list be sure to do so before you leave and you’ll get first notice when it’s available. The signup form is just below.

Last week I released my first meal plan as a free download for anyone signing up for my mailing list. The meal plan has a page devoted to getting started with the plan but that is necessarily brief, so I wanted to share a few more thoughts with everyone on how best to work the plan.

In general, I’m not a big fan of meal plans. I have friends who have made business’s out of creating them, making software so you can create your own, or providing somewhat flexible plans for people eating real food. I think all this is a sizable improvement of traditional static plans. Still, meal plans, even when you customize your’s completely, are very rigid by design. The rigidity is the very structure that is meant to discipline you into buying food, cooking and eating in a way that is fully defined in advance. I’ve lived 50 years on this earth and I can tell you I’ve not known a soul who really actually eats in this disciplined pre-planned way. At least not for very long.

Meal plans are a lot like diet plans. Same structure, same discipline in shopping and eating, all planned out well in advance. No one can stick to this for very long.

If I feel this way then why did I write a meal plan?

Funny you should ask ;-). I do think meal plans have their place in the transitioning from one kind of diet to another. They are a kind of training wheels for the beginner.

With that in mind, I’d like to make a few points on the use of the meal plan.

It’s a Guide not a Rulebook

The meal plan is a very simple old-timey restaurant style menu. Everyone in the house has their choice for breakfast or lunch, more or less, though some breakfast items you might want to make for all. Generally, old fashioned restaurants served just one thing for dinner and guests ate just that. This menu is no different.

But you can mix those dinners up and serve on different days, or take one out and serve an old favorite if you’d like. Just keep in mind you’ll need to adjust the grocery list too.

As you see, the meal plan is a simple guide, not to be rigidly followed. If you like the structure and feel you’re benefitting then absolutely stick with it! You can repeat this menu as often as you like. But if it’s starting to chafe, well, that means you are outgrowing it and that’s a good thing .

Developing a Sense of Proportion in Your Grocery Spending

The main thing the meal plan is designed to do is give you a sense of proportion in your food budget. The grocery list has three columns of prices, one labeled “Okay”, one for “Good”, and one for “Best”. These roughly match up with the quality ranking I use in my Wholesome Ingredients posts. While all ingredients aren’t covered here, I hope to cover everything on the meal plan with these guides in the very near future.

So, how to use these three columns to balance your food budget?

Basically, if you have the grocery budget for “Okay” then probably you can’t afford too much from the “Best” column right now. For example, if you have the “Okay” budget and buy pastured chicken at $21.00 each you will have to cut down on quality for something else, perhaps even below “Okay”. If that’s all you have to spend then maybe you should pass on the pastured chicken so you won’t have to lower quality below what is acceptable for something else.

This is really the 80/20 plan broken down into real world terms. 80/20 isn’t just about eating restaurant food sometimes, or eating something you know you should stay far from just every now and then, while eating well most of the time. Nope, it’s also about balancing quality. So maybe you have a “Good” budget but feel very strongly about having high quality raw local milk. If that’s the case you may need to lower your standards just a bit for something else. Possibly, you may need to lower even below “Okay” for a small number of items to get that raw milk. That’s the 80/20 rule in action.

I hope you find the grocery chart in the meal plan helpful in thinking thru what you must have at the highest quality, and what you feel you can compromise on.

Using “The Granny Plan” to Expand on the Meal Plan

In “The Granny Plan” one of the steps is about developing a pantry of food so that you are ready to make most anything at anytime. Granny would have had such a pantry along with a very rough plan for meals that she kept in her head mostly. She could vary it easily as situations demanded, like maybe an extra guest or two or ten . Or if something might go bad if it wasn’t cooked soon, she would bump her plans to make it closer. So, while there was a plan of sorts, it was pretty loosey-goosey.

Newcomers to real foods are inundated with tons of choices, so much so that I think many succumb to decision fatigue and give up of real food for the time being. I know I surely felt overwhelmed at the beginning by some many things I could learn to deciding about the quality of ingredients at the store. What could I afford? What worked into my budget?

If you’re following the meal plan here then many of these very early choices are made for you. None of these recipes require special skills like fermenting or keeping a starter for sourdough or anything tricky to learn at all. And none of the foods are unfamiliar to the average family. At first you should be about the business of learning good quality from bad and what that means to your budget. Next, learning very basic kitchen skills. The fun but tricky stuff can wait!

So in “The Granny Plan” continue to work on building up a pantry, babystep by babystep. Use the meal plan as a kind of pit stop on the way to your destination of mastery of Granny skills. Make it your first goal to have on hand everything on the grocery list and make all the meals listed there, in so far as your family likes them. Use “The Granny Plan” to babystep your way to this early goal. Easy-Peasy .

Get Your Copy of Granny’s Kickstarter Meal Plan Now

Get your own copy of the meal plan by entering your email below to sign up for my email list. Don’t worry, I won’t spam you with tons of junk . I do try to stay in touch with very brief and quite frequent tips and links I think will help you on your way. And you can easily unsubscribe at anytime.

Note that replying to an email you get from me is the quickest way for you to ask me a direct question if you’re confused about anything. I love hearing from readers and usually get back with you pretty quickly.

This funny sounding cookie is believed to have originated in New England in the 1800’s. So not only did your grandma likely eat these cookies, but your great-great-great grandma may have had them too! Supposedly the older recipes used cream of tartar and baking soda to make the cookies rise, while the newer recipes just use baking powder. In keeping with tradition, these cookies use cream of tartar.

Typically snickerdoodles are made with cinnamon, but this recipe also has ginger and nutmeg for an additional kick of fall spices. They’re soft and cakelike with a slight, buttery tang. These are perfect with a glass of cold milk. They also taste amazing dunked in milk!

Jamie teaches elementary art to the family she is nanny for. She has an adorable little boy and a wonderful husband. She attended Grace College for education and journalism and is currently working on a Master Herbalist certification.

If you’ve been making most of your buttered vegetable side dishes on the stovetop according to The Granny Plan well, here’s a new twist for you in the side-dish department! If you have just a little more time at home and can wait for something to bake in the oven this kind of recipe will make meal prep just a little easier for you.

And, this one is a great side dish for your Thanksgiving table. You can put it in the oven with your turkey just an hour or two before the turkey is done. Saves room on the stovetop for sure.

And if you really want to try something new you can make it ahead of time and use it to make a delicious homemade pie filling for the holidays.

]]>http://grannysvitalvittles.com/baked-butternut-squash/feed/0Two Meat Crockpot Chilihttp://grannysvitalvittles.com/two-meat-crockpot-chili/
http://grannysvitalvittles.com/two-meat-crockpot-chili/#commentsThu, 30 Oct 2014 13:56:38 +0000http://grannysvitalvittles.com/?p=3381Recipe by Amanda Lopes of Refocus on Being
Amanda was born to Portuguese (and French – on my mother’s side) dairy farmers in a small town in South Coast Massachusetts.…]]>

This set-it-and-forget-it crockpot meal is sure to please the guys in particular this fall. But then who doesn’t enjoy a hot steaming bowl of comforting chili on a cool night! In a nutshell all you do here is brown the meat on the stove, add the remaining ingredients and pour into your slowcooker. Then turn it on and when you get back home you’ll have a hot meal at the ready. Just make a buttered veggie and add rice or a good bread on side and you’re done!

Amanda was born to Portuguese (and French – on my mother’s side) dairy farmers in a small town in South Coast Massachusetts. Her parents both ran and worked the dairy farm, which consisted of 60 head of mainly Holstein cows on approximately 90 acres of land that overlooks a protected ocean cove. Here she learned the value, and necessity, of hard and honest work.

Two Meat Crockpot Chili

Servings

8

Servings

8

Ingredients

1lbGround Beef

1lbGround Pork

2tbspChili Powder

1tbspPaprika PowderHot Hungarian is best

1tbspGarlic Powder

1tspGround Ginger

1tbspFlax Seed Meal(optional)

1tbspChia Seeds(optional)

1tbspbutterCoconut Oil is fine too

1LargeOnionChopped coarsely

1MediumGreen Bell Pepper

1-2SmallHot Red Peppers(optional)

115oz CanTomato Sauce

128oz CanDiced Tomatoes

2CupsChopped Carrots

Instructions

Brown the ground meats in a large cast iron skillet, over medium heat, in the oil, butter or ghee

Once browned, drain off any excess fat, and add in all of the spices and flax meal

Mix together, and add in the diced tomatoes and fresh vegetables, thoroughly incorporate all ingredients

Nothing says fall than the smell of apples and cinnamon. It makes the entire house smell warm and comforting.

These ‘baked’ apples are simple, throw it all in the crock pot and have a fresh warm dessert ready at dinnertime. Served with vanilla ice cream, it’s like apple pie with out the crust. This recipe from Jessica at Simply Healthy Home show how just how simple and easy real food can be!

Jessica’s family also loves these apples mixed into a bowl of oatmeal for a warm breakfast.

Jessica loves to learn and share about natural living, from whole foods to herbal remedies. With a desire to take care of her family through natural means she is currently working on healing through diet and natural supplements. Jessica started her blog Simply Healthy Home to share her family's journey to being healthy and happy. Follow her on facebookpinterest

Crockpot Baked Apples

Servings

Prep Time

4

5

Cook Time

Passive Time

4Hours

4 Hours

Servings

Prep Time

4

5

Cook Time

Passive Time

4Hours

4 Hours

Ingredients

6ApplesPeeled, cored and cut in half

1tbspLemon Juice

3tbspbutter

4tbspSugar

2tspCinnamon

Instructions

Add all ingredients in the crock pot and cook on low for four hours. Serve warm.

I loves me some potato soup! This one from Jessica at Simply Healthy Home looks particularly good. Potato soup is always greeted with excitement in our house by one and all. Usually when I make potato soup I use a mix of broth and heavy whipping cream instead of milk, but I buy a ton of cream for cooking. You might not want to do that, or then again maybe you would ;-). Milk is more affordable than cream in general making this recipe more practical for more families.

Jessica loves to learn and share about natural living, from whole foods to herbal remedies. With a desire to take care of her family through natural means she is currently working on healing through diet and natural supplements. Jessica started her blog Simply Healthy Home to share her family's journey to being healthy and happy. Follow her on facebookpinterest

Creamy Potato Soup

Ingredients

8-10wholepotatoessmall to medium size

1wholeOnionlarge, chopped

3wholecarrotspeeled, chopped

2stalkscelerychopped

6clovesgarlicminced

1/2stickbutter

1/4cupstarchpotato or corn

2quartsmilk

Instructions

Wash and chop potatoes into uniform sized pieces (leave the skins on for added nutrition)

Place potatoes in about an inch of water and salt and pepper generously (The key to good potato soup is here, getting the potatoes salted well!)

Bring water to a boil then back down to a simmer and leave the lid on to cook potatoes until tender (10-15 minutes)

While potatoes are simmering, add the better and chopped vegetables into a pan and sautee until the onions are golden (This will help give your soup a sweeter flavor)

When potatoes are done, add the sauteed vegetables to the potatoes and water

Add milk (leaving one cup to mix the starch in) and bring to a light simmer for 10-15 minutes

Mix the starch with the reserved cup of milk while you bring the soup to a boil

There is a myth of the elixir of life. If you could find it and drink it you’d be granted eternal life and youth. This myth has been handed down since antiquity throughout many different cultures. A magic potion that cures all ills and aging along with eliminating the certainty of eventual death. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?

Well, real traditional broth isn’t exactly like that ;-). But it comes about as close as food gets! It won’t eliminate aging but it’ll make a substantial contribution to slowing it. It won’t cure all the ills of man but it can produce amazing reversals of illness. In folklore it has the reputation of “raising the dead”.

In their new book “Nourishing Broth” Sally Fallon Morell and Kaayla Daniel, PhD go into great detail in support of the science of why broth is so very good for you. And well they did. I know I get plenty of questions on the topic myself and the reasons why are so broad and diverse I find it hard to formulate an answer. Now it’s as easy as checking this book! It’s an encyclopedia of knowledge on how the nutrients found in abundance in broth are used by the body and how this knowledge might be applied by those afflicted with specific illnesses to help support their healing. There are many testimonials from people whose conditions improved when broth was added to their diet.

Some of the conditions covered are:

Osteoarthritis

Rheumatoid Arthritis

Scleroderma

Psoriasis

Wound Healing

Infectious Disease

Digestive Disorders

Cancer

Sports and Fitness Issues

Anti-Aging

I have a personal testimonial too Adding both broth and raw milk to my diet has over time helped me greatly reduce my need for asthma medication. But that’s a subject for another post. Enough for now to say that I consider both to be the the cornerstones of good health.

How Commercial Stock is Made

I used to buy cans of stock at the grocery store. Usually organic which is expensive. (Psst … they share a tip for telling good broth from bad without looking at the label). Had I only known I was mostly getting MSG for my trouble, well I would have been horrified. In the preface Sally and Kaayla share with us how commercially canned and dried stocks came to be available. It’s the story of the isolation of the savory flavor the Japanese call umami. There is no word for it in english. The source of this flavor is MSG.

No time was wasted, production of MSG for the food industry started almost immediately. MSG could be used to enhance the flavor of foods that were flavorless from processing. Bouillon cubes rolled off the assembly line made with the new MSG. I wonder, is processed food really possible without MSG to give it flavor? Probably not. I doubt anyone would want to eat it.

How Granny Made Her Broth

In contrast traditional broth is a very holistic affair. Our Grandmothers and Great-Grandmothers and so on back as long as memory, kept a stock pot going, first over the fire, then on the stove. In this pot they placed odds and ends of bones, meats, offal and veggie clippings and kept it on a slow simmer. Anyone could ladle some soup out at anytime. The authors point out it was the original fast food! So good broth was pretty much always available and served in some form with most every meal. Gravies, sauces, soups, stews, aspics, etc. You get the picture :-).

An Economy Food

Granny’s broth was economical and knew no class. Everyone ate broth though the detail of what it was made from varied according to economics.

From the Introduction:

For most people in the world, soup serves as a humble economy food crafted from leftover bones, shells, wilted vegetable scraps, and whatever else is available, according to the frugal principle of “waste not, want not.” Wealthier households use whole chickens, fish, and hunks of lamb, beef, or pork to make the very best stock, while the poor often rely on carcasses and scraps from butchering.

In short broth was everywhere served from the humblest kitchen to the King’s castle. Everyone ate large quantities of broth.

Taking Care of Yourself The Granny Way

In my book “The Granny Plan” early into the plan we start making broth. Broth is essential to good wholesome healthy food so we need to get past any anxiety about making it right off. Don’t worry, it’s really easy. I know I was intimidated the first time I made broth. “Nourishing Broth” will help you dispel any mystery about the whole process. Generally I make mine using the slow cooker method on pg. 155 of “Nourishing Broth“.

Tons of Recipes from the Basic to the Exotic

Those searching to get more broth into their lives will enjoy the large number recipes. Plenty of great ideas waiting for you here! Soups and stews, sauces and gravies, grains and legumes, aspics, tonics and even broth for breakfast.

There is nothing like a good soup to kick off a meal. I love soup all year round but it is most dear to me heading into the fall season.

This soup is particularly easy to make. We’re boiling a chicken basically, then browning some onion and garlic. We add the chicken meat, kale and broth then cook the kale for a bit and Bam, we’re done! I’d recommend cooking the chicken ahead of time. I keep chicken broth and cooked chicken handy in the freezer as a shortcut to dishes like this one. Generally the longer greens cook the more easily they are digested so you could also extend the cooking time for the kale.

Cook chicken in the water with salt and pepper until the meat falls off the bones, approximately 2 hours on medium to low setting on the stove top. This also works well in the slow cooker but of course will take all day.

When chicken is cooked remove the bones, leaving chicken and broth which should be nicely flavored. Do this by removing all the chicken carefully checking for small bones, and then strain the broth.

In a separate pan saute onion and garlic until brown in coconut oil or butter.

Add the onion and garlic and chicken and broth simmer together.

Remove, the kale from the stems and cut up the leaves into bite size pieces and add to the soup. Discard the stems or even better feed them to your rabbits or guinea pigs or other animals you may have on hand.

Let simmer until the kale is light green and ready to eat, approximately 10-15 minutes. (It should be easy to chew at this point.)